Cloud hosting innovates healthcare treatment capabilities

The cloud has benefited numerous industries with its sophisticated storage, sharing capabilities and variety of features that simplify job processes. As mobile devices become more prominent, it’s increasingly important for organisations to accommodate this trend in order to innovate and be successful. Healthcare is one of the many fields that have gained an advantage with cloud services. Being able to view patient files from any location while still protecting the information from unauthorised viewers has emerged as a significant asset for the medical industry and continues to improve various functions.

As the cloud advances, it has added more sophisticated security features that will help organisations observe HIPAA regulations while still giving staff access to necessary resources. With all of the innovations, MarketsandMarkets is expecting that the cloud market will experience an uptake of more than 20 percent annually from 2012 to 2017. This significant growth is partially due to the new requirements for paperless processes within the healthcare sector as well as the effort to accurately treat patients at a more rapid pace. With the cloud, staff can easily share information and improve the efficiency of the entire workforce.

“The concept can be applied in a variety of ways, including data storage and data loss prevention, maintaining patient information records, and authorised sharing of information,” according to Drugs.com writer Mia Burns. “For instance, recorded patient information may need to be shared beyond hospital boundaries during an emergency where time is a crucial factor. This can be done quickly and efficiently by providing authorised access to this information on the cloud.”

Improving healthcare standards
In order to remain compliant with healthcare regulations, staff must ensure that they have an appropriate cloud hosting service that will meet industry standards. Burns noted that the cloud provides extra safety through consistent software updates and a high degree of technical oversight from the provider. Among other sectors of the world, healthcare facilities in Europe have increasingly adopted the solution and the market is expected to grow {what is expected to grow?} by 20 percent over the next seven years. Main challenges with the cloud in this region still exist, but many organisations are searching for solutions as the technology matures.

“Cloud computing implementation is, however, in its early stages, and there are still a few restraining factors such as security and compliance concerns, shortage of qualified personnel to shift data from hardware to the cloud, and poor broadband penetration or low internet speeds in many parts of Europe,” Burns wrote.

With the advancements in the cloud, healthcare organisations can also quickly respond to any potential crises. According to BioPrepWatch, by gathering data from blogs, social media and search trends, the staff can better stream a mass amount of data and identify any emerging commonalities. This will help not only better determine how incoming patients should be treated, but also allow for quicker public warning.

The cloud has benefited numerous industries and is currently making significant headway in the healthcare industry. With the cloud solutions, medical facilities can better serve patients and ensure that they are keeping important data secure.

Brain Brafton loves and lives technology. A big data geek and an information retrieval junkie he consumes, analyses, interprets and process data like he was a machine. To keep in contact with Brain find him onGoogle+or on Twitter